Nadal Wins Again

Rafael Nadal continued his win streak with a straight sets win over Guillermo Canas to pick up another trophy in Barcelona. I watched parts of the match, recorded the whole thing. I'll watch the entire match now that I know how it ends. It will be good to watch while I'm working out on the treadmill.

The streak continues

Rafael Nadal has now won 71 straight matches on clay. He's in the finals of the Barcelona event, a tournament he's won for the last two years. He will be facing Guillermo Canas in the finals. I checked the head-to-head stats on atptennis.com and Nadal leads 2-0. But those matches were played in 2005, so you can't really use that statistic as a predictor of the result of the match today.

Marking Time

Time will fly a little more enjoyably now. I ordered and received the 2007 Rafael Nadal calendar. Many good pictures of the King of Clay. I just have to find somewhere to hang it up.

One Of These Days I Won't be Afraid To Watch

I taped the Finals of the Monte Carlo event because I just couldn't sit there and watch it live. Rafael Nadal beat Roger Federer in straight sets. I will watch it on the re-air now that I know how it ends and I'll probably tape it again since the first time, I didn't set it to tape long enough and I didn't get the last game recorded. This will be a good thing for me to watch when I'm on the treadmill.

Monte Carlo

I got to see the second set of the Rafael Nadal semifinal this morning. I was afraid to watch it though. I missed the first set and he played really well, winning 6-0. But then when I started watching it, Berdych started playing better and Nadal made a few more unforced errors. I thought I was jinxing him, as I tend to do when watching golf and tennis. But luckily, that seems to just be my imagination because Nadal continued to play well enough to win the semifinal. I haven't heard the results of the Federer semi final, but I'm assuming he won today too and will play Nadal in the final.

Fed Cup

The USA is competing in the first round of Fed Cup today. Their opponents are the Belgians. The top ranked Belgians, Henin and Clijsters, aren't playing so there will be some unfamiliar faces to watch today. Here's a link to a good all-around article about it.

Home Today, Some Tennis Watched

I got to watch some of the Quarterfinals of the Monte Carlo event. I saw Berdych, Soderling, Federer, Gasquet. I didn't see Nadal. I was on the go today taking mom to lunch, visiting my puppies at the seller's house. I don't think I'm going to get to see him on the rebroadcast tonight. I think he will be on after my bedtime. I just checked google news and see that Nadal made it into the semifinals. So, maybe I will see him play tomorrow? Who knows.

Monte Carlo

I've been lucky enough to figure out when the Tennis Channel is airing the coverage of the Monte Carlo event. This morning I saw a bit of Fernando Gonzalez and this evening I saw Rafael Nadal.

I could have watched more of the Nadal match tonight against Chela, but I was putting together a doggie gate I got in the mail and then I took the dogs out for a walk and found one of my two cats dead. She had been sick for a long time and she was a farm cat so it wasn't expected that she'd live forever. The average life span of a farm cat here is about 2 year. After that, they either run off or disappear or get killed. So, I called mom to tell her to have dad come up and bury the cat.

Screwed By Blogger

Monday night everything was fine. I could post on my blogs and life was good. Tuesday after work, I discovered that the not so fine folks at Blogger had migrated all my blogs to what they call ‘new blogger’, supposedly a better form of blogger that offers new features. Well, I tried to log into blogger using my blogger username and password - nothing. Tried logging into new blogger with my google account name and password - again nothing. I was redirected to the blogger help site. What kind of help did I get? Canned how to articles that did nothing but lead me around in circles. Then I clicked on every option available to try to contact an actual employee of blogger, but it took me over an hour to find a form to complete to submit to them. And it wasn’t a ‘report a problem’ form. I went to the google help group and found that many, many others were suffering from the same problem I had. Did google employees help us? One employee posted the same canned answer that we found at blogger help. And he said ‘if this doesn’t work then contact us directly at (insert website). This kind of thing may be best solved on an individual basis.” Well, when you click on that website link, it takes you back to the page where I clicked everything I could to try to find a ‘help me’ form to fill out. After all this, I posted my own comment on the google help group website detailing every step I had taken. I wrote everything down and did it three or four times so I know what I tried and what I didn’t. To date no google tech support person has responded to anyone on that forum that has the same problem I did. Finally, some other blogger supplied the answer and it involved tinkering with the address of a link that blogger supplies us when we ask to retrieve our passwords. Basically, that link that we got when we asked to retrieve our passwords was reading our usernames as Case Sensitive, but when Blogger tried to find our accounts, it was not reading our usernames as Case Sensitive so it wouldn’t recognize us. That is a programming problem that blogger and google tech support are just too lazy to fix. So, instead, they let their customers flounder in frustration.

Bottom line: Blogger/Google Tech support is not serving the customers. They would rather spend their time making money in corporate mergers and stock options, lying to investors by saying that Google is a good company that provides valuable goods and services to the public when in actuality they ignore the customers and do not service their products to the satisfaction of the end users. Or, they are goofing off in a lax workplace in which productivity is not emphasized, but playing with toys is. Word to investors - if the tech support won’t help the people the company serves, then the company doesn’t care about you either. Sell your stock and invest your money in money market accounts or IRAs or Certificates of Deposit. You’d be better off.

Final Results

Ivo Karlovic beat Mariano Zabaleta in straight sets at the US Men's Clay Court Championships.

The Bryan Brothers were playing Knowles and Nestor a while ago on the Tennis Channel, but I've been switching between LPGA and PGA golf and haven't been able to watch any of their play.

US Men's Clay Court Championships

I watched the second semifinal last night which featured James Blake vs Mariano Zabaleta from Argentina. It was a good match that ended in a straight sets win for Zabaleta, who had to qualify to play in the tournament after coming back from injuries and surgeries in the last couple of years.

So in the final you will see Zabaleta and the Croatian Karlovic. That airs today at 1:30pm eastern on the Tennis Channel.

Clay, but Not

They are saying on the Tennis Channel that the surface at the US Men's Clay Court Championships is a soft surface but not quite clay. And that they are using a ball that makes the game faster than a traditional clay court experience. What's the point in playing this tournament as a lead up to the French Open if it's not playing like a clay court?

US Men's Clay Court Championships

I saw the first set of the semifinal match between Ivo Karlovic and Albert Montanes today. Karlovic advanced to the finals. It was nice to see a Spaniard play today.

Carlos Moya

I just saw the No Strings episode with Carlos Moya. He's got a cute little doggie and he puts it in a playpen. It looked like an English Bulldog. I may have to consider that as an option for my puppies, but I'm hoping they catch on to the puppy pad training really quickly. I'm going to follow the "Housebreak Your Dog in 7 Days" method as detailed by author Shirlee Kalstone. Hopefully, it will work as quickly on 7 week old puppies as the book says it works on a 16 week ond puppy. I plan to have a total of about 17 days straight to follow the 7 days method. I'll have 9 straight days off from work, then Mom and Dad will come up to follow the schedule for 5 days, then I'll have three days off to continue the training. After that, they will be shut up in my bathroom while I'm at work. There is one modification I'm making to Kalstone's program - I plan to get up in the middle of the night to let the puppies out of the crate and put them on the puppy pads to give them a chance to pee. They can't hold it for 7 straight hours at 7 weeks old.

French Open Redux

Last night the Tennis Channel had French Open highlights shows on. I got to see some players that aren't around anymore.

It's still a little early to be promoting the French Open though.

Davis Cup: Spain VS USA, Final Matches

Tommy Robredo won his match against one of the Bryan Brothers, but Lopez lost his match against Blake. Lopez started off really slow, but got into the second set and took it to a tiebreak.

The Spanish team seems to be a young one. I get the impression that they will improve over time.

I was very glad to have these two matches to watch today. It was either this or the Masters golf tournament and that tournament has been horrible to watch this week. No one had any good rounds the first three days. It was so depressing.

Right now, I'm watching a documentary about the Dead Sea rather than the golf tournament.

Davis Cup: Spain VS USA, Doubles Match

It was Lopez and Verdasco vs the Bryan Brothers. I knew there was a very good reason why I keep saying I want to move to Spain. The views there (aka the really handsome guys) must be really nice. LOL. I wonder if the Spanish Tennis Federation folks have a calendar for sale featuring all these guys.

The tennis was pretty good. I like watching doubles, but they need better camera angles because some of those shots I completely didn't see.

I don't see why all the countries don't focus on doubles the way they do pairs figure skating. The Bryan Brothers need a lot more big time endorsements so they can bring even more attention to doubles.

Davis Cup: Spain VS USA

Well, I was very naughty last night. I fell asleep during the James Blake-Tommy Robredo match. I'll comment on what I saw of it: Once in a while Robredo would come up with great shots that would make you think "wow". He doesn't look like a player who could have a lot of success on the court, but he's had a lot of success. Sneaky Good is what they call that. I think Blake won the match last night though.

Djokovic Wins Sony Ericsson Title

After listening to his acceptance speech, I think Novak Djokovic is a bigger Guillermo Canas fan than I am. It was really great to see two players so nice to each other and so gracious in their speeches.

The match itself seemed a lot tougher than what the score reflected, especially the second set which included a 20 minute game that featured something like 8 or 9 deuces.

Djokovic knows how to endear himself to the crowds. He gave away everything, hats, wristbands, rackets, and to top it off, he walked around shirtless there after the match, a sure way to gain the support of the female fans.